Entries from Buffalo Chow tagged with 'Drinks'

While part of Buffalo Chow's mission is to share Western New York's best dining traditions with the world, another part is to bring the world's best innovations back here. That's why today's article is internationally themed, inspired by an experience...

New England was our first destination after pausing Buffalo Chow last year, and thanks to the magic of Facebook photo galleries, readers were able to follow some of our culinary adventures in Boston, Massachusetts back then. This week, we rekindled...

Buffalo is so dominated by blue collar bars that the opening of a new gastropub such as Blue Monk is noteworthy, and seemingly novel. But in some other places, upscale bars aren't just an anomaly - they're actually really popular,...

The recipe for ice is so obvious and so widely known that it doesn't merit a page in any cookbook or bartending manual. It can be stated in two words: "freeze water." And when that water has finished freezing, it's...

The parallels mightn't be exact, but we see bits and pieces of Buffalo in New Orleans: in Buffalo's case, years of neglect and decline led to a slow corrosion of the city with some simultaneous growth in the suburbs, while...

When people move to New York from other states - or just come back from extended visits elsewhere - they discover two major limitations on the way they can shop here for wine and liquor. First, New Yorkers can't buy...

If the three most important decisions a business owner can make are "location, location, location," as the old saying goes, the natural advantages enjoyed by Williamsville's Creekview Restaurant are obvious. While beautiful waterfalls at Glen Falls Park are only a...

As much as we love Buffalo's Elmwood Avenue, we're not blind to its strengths and weaknesses. Eclectic indie shops? Check. Fun places to eat and drink heavily? Check. One of Buffalo's best farmers' markets? Big check. Good Mexican food? Ch......

Some restaurants are so filled with teens and twentysomethings that older patrons stay away; at others, such as the Glen Park Tavern in Williamsville, the average age is in the 50's, and younger diners may overhear - as we did...

If you're the sort of person who is won over to a restaurant based more on its decor than its culinary merits, Jojo Bistro - a lower-priced sister restaurant to its immediate Sheridan Drive neighbor Black & Blue - is...

As we write these words, we're in your future: Japan is 14 hours ahead on the clock, such that its today is your tomorrow, so when we leave here, we will actually arrive back home two hours before we departed...

Nagoya is Japan's fourth-largest city, and though one mightn't guess as much from its staid streets, it's obsessed with miso. Known best for its role in the common Japanese soup, miso paste - actually, pastes - are made from fermented...

Once in a while, a meal completely changes the way you'll look at the same food in the future, and yesterday in Kobe, Japan, we had one of those meals. We weren't expecting it - in fact, we thought it...

As we prepare for our next major food journey outside of Buffalo - details coming soon - we wanted to fill you in on a few of our recent restaurant visits inside Western New York. The places are very different...

Rarely do we visit a place so surprisingly interesting and worthwhile that we can't imagine how we missed it in the past, but Becker Farms is one of those places. Loyal Buffalo Chow readers may recall that we weren't enthusiastic...

In one week's time, Buffalo Chow's editors ate our way through so many of Southern California's restaurants that friends and family e-mailed to ask how we'd digested everything - the answer: we're not sure, but it worked. Most of the...

Every two or so months, Buffalo Chow's editors have a "which restaurants is WNY missing" discussion, and three weeks ago, Jamba Juice's name came up on our list. A purveyor of smoothies that can double as full meals, this 729-location...

Just as business textbooks will one day include detailed case studies on Apple's unbelievable come-from-nowhere, conventional wisdom-bucking successes with the iPod and iPhone, they'll also likely discuss the rise and fall of Starbucks, a company that seemed to be hurtling...

Lockport's Ida Fritz Park isn't easy to find with Google Maps - it's at the corner of Transit and Lockport's West Main - but for several hours on one summer day, it hosts what now may well be Western New...

After drinking 60 ounces of beer - roughly four pints - you're not supposed to feel smarter than you were before you started; even standing up may be a challenge. Yet three hours after we paid our admission fee, received...

Although the Buffalo Brewpub has been at its Main Street location near Transit for over 20 years, it was only in the last two that we started to visit - after all, Brennan's was almost across the street, and when...

Last week, we told you about Pittsford, New York's "Wegmans of the Future" - a 140,000-square foot store with a fancy restaurant on one side, free mini-facials in its cosmetics department, and a Godiva chocolate shop up front. But we...

If you've ever tried "Buffalo Wings" outside of Western New York, where all sorts of crazy chicken concoctions masquerade as our hometown specialty, you know this already: authenticity matters. Authenticity is the difference between experiences that please novices and ones...

A piece of friendly advice: if you like beer, and you discover that a well-regarded local brewing company is operating both a full-service bar and a restaurant in its home town an hour away, don't think, just go. That's why...

As much as we love the appetizer and entree choices at every year's Taste of Buffalo, we always - always - save room for desserts, and try our best to sample some of the drink options from local cafes and...

While loganberry would be at the very top of our list of drinks that are hard to find outside of Western New York, there are a couple of other beverages that readers have become desperate to locate after leaving the...

Ninety-nine-cent packages of Tom Yum Cashews. Legitimately good wines - ones people swear by - for $2 to $3. Amazing sweets. And fresh, high-quality produce at amazingly low prices. If you're wondering what it would take to beat the mighty,...

Every once in a long while, we are so excited by something we come across at a restaurant that we take the time to try and make it ourselves. Our most recent project: Jaleo's White Sangria, served at the Washington,...

As much as we enjoy The Irishman, we're glad that fans of Irish food have another good suburban option: located on Niagara Falls Boulevard in Tonawanda, Shannon Pub is a very strong American and Irish restaurant - one that takes...

Six hours. Six vineyards. Nine people. A limo that started out with cheese, crackers, cookies and snacks, then ended the day packed with reds, whites, blushes, pinot noirs, fruit wines, and ice wines. With the sun shining and a group...

Every once in a while, perhaps more often than that, we're going to post quick notes on our favorite pre-packaged foods and drinks from inside or outside of Western New York. Today's update focuses on maple syrup candies and cookies,...

Every once in a long while, our work at iPhone and iPod web site iLounge overlaps with our coverage at Buffalo Chow, and this is a prime example: an article discussing 14 different food and drink applications for the iPhone...

We may have grown up in Western New York, but we were living out of town when Dyngus Day evolved from a series of neighborhood festivals into the largest event of its kind in the world. So, like some of...

Every week or so, our Bubbly column looks at a mix of locally produced and locally available beverages, spotlighting everything from wines to beers to teas and sodas. This week's Bubbly looks at four wines from three area wineries we...

We wish it weren't true, but authentic Chinese food is becoming more difficult to find in Western New York: low-end plaza take-outs with Americanized menus have multiplied across the area, as classier mid-range and high-end restaurants continue to disappear. Thankfully,...

It's not ready for a review quite yet, but there's a brand new coffee chain in town, and it seems to be gunning for Starbucks and Spot Coffee. Seemingly out of nowhere, Coffee Culture appeared in the former Sweet Jenny's...

It's probably our shortest Bubbly column yet, and for good reason: having spent weeks reviewing all sorts of Western New York fruit wines, we've sorted through the good, the great, and the not so hot - this week's one of...

You love loganberry. We love loganberry. So it's with some dismay that we share the following news: Aunt Rosie's Loganberry, a local favorite for over 20 years, appears to be fading away. As we prepared to write an update to...

Though most of our weekly Bubbly columns have focused on individual flavors of fruit wine, this week's is a little different: we continue our look at Western New York's wineries and nearby competitors by expanding on a category that we'd...

Sure, Buffalo Chow's editors love Western New York's foods, but we wouldn't want to neglect another local treasure: delicious beverages. Ask a long-time resident what non-alcoholic drink they most associate with this area, and there's a great chance the answer...

Thus far in our Bubbly series, we've covered blueberry, cherry, raspberry, and cranberry wines from Western New York, but we've said very little about the most obvious fruit - the mighty grape. When the average sophisticated wine drinker thinks of...

Unexpectedly, the cranberry - a tart, bitter little fruit - has given our Bubbly column its best overall week yet. In prior weeks, we've looked at blueberry, raspberry, and cherry wines from local and nearby vineyards, any one of which...

Over the last few weeks, we've used a little space on Buffalo Chow to look at interesting wines from Western New York and nearby areas, starting with Blueberry Wines, continuing with Cherry Wines, and this week, possibly nearing the end...

Imagine falling in love with a certain food or drink, then moving someplace where it's unavailable. If you've ever left Buffalo, you probably had a list of these items - we did - but now that we're back, there are...

Perhaps we should have quit while we were ahead. Last week, we excitedly canvassed a small collection of locally available blueberry beverages - wine, beer, and tea - and laid plans for a series of Bubbly articles on beverages from...

We enjoy wines, but we don't claim to be experts in them; instead, we focus on finding the best-tasting options in categories we think we might enjoy. You've already seen our brief series on Sake and Sparkling Sakes; today, we're...

We previously published a single article discussing two versions of Japanese rice wine: traditional sake (pronounced sah-kay, not sah-kee), and a newer, gentler option: "sparkling sake." After three updates to the article, we decided to split it into two pieces,...

How much do we love sake? We keep a good bottle around. We sealed our wedding vows with one. And we even named one of our dogs after the Japanese rice wine, years before it began to climb in popularity...

"You paid $4 for that," she said. "$5," I corrected her, grimacing at the watery, less than completely full cup with an icey mint green substance inside. "So you deserve to have it made right," she said, approaching the barista...

If there is any name a restaurant could take to instantly entice potential diners, that name would be "The Chocolate Bar," a phrase that clearly evokes both desserts and drinks without explicitly identifying the trouble your wallet's about to be...